The Rising Tide

Margaret Deland (1857--1945) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet. She also wrote an autobiography in two volumes. She is generally considered part of the literary realism movement. Deland is known principally for the novel John Ward, Preacher (1888), an indictment of Calvinism, which became a best-seller. Her 'Old Chester' books, based on her early memories of the Pittsburgh communities where she grew up - including Maple Grove and Manchester - were also popular. She was recognized as an important and popular author of literary realism in the United States, though some of her plots and themes were shocking to proper Bostonians. In her lifetime she was called the American Thomas Humphry Ward and was compared to Elizabeth Gaskell. The Rising Tide is a novel about issues confronting women in the years just before suffrage set in the 19th century fictional locale of Mercer, an Ohio River community that represents Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The novel tells the story of Frederica Payton, a "new woman" who illustrates the extremes of the feminist question.